On a special edition of THE INTERVUE, we are in the summer season and its important that we pay close attention to our inner and outer beauty care. I am talking to the founder of Skinworx in San Francisco, nurse Cheryl Pierce as she gives us some helpful hints to take care our skin from the inside out.
How did you get into nursing in the first place? I read that you were a wound care nurse, and I want to know how did that experience help you transition into what you are doing today?
Yes, my specialty was skin and wounds. I’ve always had passion about skin. Well, first of all, skin is the largest organ in the body, right?
Yes, indeed.
And it’s the first impression when you meet people. They look at you in the eye, but yet it’s the skin is the most obvious part of your being. So, I specialized in wound care. I’ve always been fascinated about non healing wounds. So, after being a wound care nurse for a long time, after being a nurse for a long time, we have this restlessness. I don’t know about you, but I experience this restlessness after several years of doing the same thing. I mean, I love it; I just had this compelling feeling for change, and I really needed to have a change, because I had been in the business for a very long time. And I thought, “oh, ok,” I thought it was random, but it’s not random after this. It’s no coincidence I received this e-mail to learn how to inject Botox. And my stepdad, that’s his specialty chronic migraines and I thought, “oh, let me be an addition to your office and I will inject Botox for beauty and let’s get a laser for skin care.” And after so many years, I started Ageless Beauty Skin Clinic in 2007, but I evolved that clinic into Skinworx actually about two years ago.
Oh, wow!
And so–yeah–so only Skinworx was birthed two years ago but Ageless Beauty was about ten years ago, and its kind of—you want to evolve. The best version of ourselves, so I’ve had the vision of Skinworx for five years, but I was scared to change, of course, it’s always difficult for most people. And my heart was just bugging me so much, like, “you need to develop Skinworx.” I need to be out there. I feel like I’ve been inside a cave in a medical building for so long, like, “Oh my gosh, there’s no windows in there.”
Mm-hmm.
And I literally had panic attacks. I felt like I conceived Skinworx for five years and finally, I feel like I’ve been pregnant for five years. I need to give birth to this idea. And I hired spa consultants in New York to help me develop this concept of Skinworx, The Science of Confidence, because my mission is to inspire confidence and joy thorough better skin, because when you have confidence—we need to be confident in our own skin.
Absolutely, I definitely agree with you. In fact, I remember reading about your bio and you came up with a term called “psycho-dermatology.” I’ve never heard of that one before. And from what I’ve read, it’s the relationship between a person’s mental state and his or her complexion. Can you emphasize or talk about psycho-dermatology for us?
Psycho-dermatology is the study of the relationship between skin and our mental health, especially our emotional well-being. So, in this day and age, a lot of people in the beauty industry increasing because people want to feel better about themselves. Skin and emotional health is directly related because, first of all when we wake up in the morning, what do we do? We go to the bathroom and look at ourselves in the mirror and we’re like, “oh, what is that? Is that a zit? It’s in the center of my face!”
Yeah.
And so, it effects our emotions because it’s the first thing we see, and especially with top two skin concerns, usually acne and brown spots. And so, the population with acne, they usually have self-esteem issues because they have lower confidence; they feel self-conscious about it. It’s something you can see immediately. In the face, they feel red, they’re inflamed and usually—and this may sound, really as a parent, but the skin problems are usually a reflection of what we feel inside, or directly related to what we eat.
Hmm.
I’ve asked–yeah–I’ve asked an integrative medicine doctor and I said, “oh what you’re take on acne?” I just wanted to hear her opinion on acne and she said, “oh, usually the main thing is a dairy allergy.” And that was first I’d heard of that, and I thought, “oh, acne is usually caused by stress and hormones, that’s the main thing,” but also the main culprit is dairy, but it does affect your self-esteem, self-confidence. When a person, whether you have brown spots or acne all over your face—because a majority of my clients actually have issues with brown spots and acne on the face, and that’s usually my top seller in the store, is acne products and skin brighteners.
That’s pretty interesting. I’d like to know, since you mentioned the first thing we do is look at our face and I said, when it comes to looking at my face, I feel I can do some improvement. So, I want to know from nurse to potential future client, what is the best way for a man like me—I’ll tell you my age, I’m 37—can fight the aging process the way their face looks. What can you recommend for me?
What I’d recommend is come in to the store. We do offer free digital skin analysis, where you can really see what’s going on underneath. Digital skin analysis, you can see eight photographs where it covers pores, textures, sun damage, brown spots, inflammation, porphyrins, which is basically a naturally occurring bacteria you can see. The bacteria count in the skin, because a lot of it, too much and it causes clogged pores. And it scores your skin according to male population your age and skin type, so it’s not random.
It actually compares your skin to the same age and skin type. It gives your scoring system and when you click on the view graph, you can see where you can improve your skin You can see if your lowest score is brown spots or sun damage. Then we have arranged the score according to skin issues, so there’s a big sign where this cluster of products is for brightening or acne for special skin tightening, wrinkles. So, depending on your skin score—skin analysis—then the clinician can recommend the best program for you the hydro facial program in which we offer memberships also. So, the best skin care program and best skin care product for your skin type. So, it’s very high-tech and customized.
This is something I’ve never even heard of before. But it sounds quite interesting, especially how the skin treatment has evolved through the twenty-first century.
Yes, in fact, it’s a very exciting future, because—have you ever heard of A.I., artificial intelligence?
Well, not the movie, but yes I’ve heard of it (laughs).
(laughs) It’s amazing! They’re now creating robots, and it’s actually here already. It’s here to stay. They’re creating robots to diagnose the skin and these robots are 95% more accurate than human doctors. That’s a little bit scary (laughs). Yes, so the world is changing. Not just in the world of beauty, but every industry.
Absolutely. It is definitely changing, definitely evolving. I want to know what are some of the inner and outer beauty care that you could recommend to celebrities?
CP: Oh yeah, I recommend—well, it’s a little bit unique at Skinworx, so we always start with the skin, right?
Right.
Now, outside of Skinworx, we now also offer retreats. If you want confidence on a deeper level, I now offer retreats to really explore areas of your life You can re-tighten the skin confidence and joy in your life. If it’s just the outer skin they want to address, we have the technology and the procedures and the skin care for that. They want to work on a deeper level of confidence, I am also a certified high performance coach, in which I explore the different areas of your life so you can really dig deeper to enhance the confidence level within.
In fact, I just had two retreats, well, one in resorts last month and April, confidence manage your alignment—actually, I did a three-day alignment accelerator retreat for more confidence mastering. And I did that for three days. I had a dozen people in there. And I also spoke as a guest speaker in Atlanta, GA for my friend’s retreat. And we were going to be offering that once a year for those who were interested in exploring confidence mastering, so they can be the best version of themselves and live a more fulfilling and purposeful life.
Brilliant! I love that. How often do you do these confidence boosting retreats? How often do you these in a year?
It’s new. I’m just doing it once a year for now and I’m going to be offering a one-day workshop so people can really get a taste of my confidence mastery work. So, I’ll do a one-day workshop sometime in September, but then the actual three-day retreat will be in the springtime again next year. I just did one last month. The next one will be next year.
So, for those who can’t get to a spa retreat or a skin clinician, what can you recommend at home to take care of their face?
I definitely recommend, if they’re not the type to be spa goers, they can do it themselves. We have a DIY pimple pill packs that you can use once a week. We have exfoliating products that they can do once a week or twice a week at home depending on their skin type and their skin texture, so I like to recommend the Skinworx retexturizing cream.
So that you can use every other night, because you do see results within a week. We have a whole lot of products out there in the store, but I highly recommend the retexturizing cream, because that will really smooth out the fine lines and brighten the skin. And we have top products, the Triple Action Brightening Pack, that’s our top seller. To fade brown spots.
Ok.
Somehow it’s cleared those brown spots caused by acne also, and they end up with hyper-pigmentation, post inflammatory hyper-pigmentation caused by acne scars. It fades those also. Those are our top two sellers.
One last question for you. I read on your website your slogan is, “Lead bravely, act boldly,” which when I think of boldly, I think of Star Trek. I want to know, what does that slogan mean to you directly?
Oh yeah, that’s actually my personal brand. That’s not the Skinworx brand, but that’s my personal brand. To lead bravely and act boldly is—you know, we live in a world full of anxiety and fear.
We need to reconnect again without heart, because heart is the seat of wisdom and boldness and confidence and intuition. And intuition is really actually the voice of our heart. We have totally disconnected with our heart, because a lot of us live in our cranial brain, and that’s where fear, doubt and worry come from. So my slogan “lead bravely, act boldly” means that to really live your life confidently and courageously so you can live the life that you were meant to live, and to build the business that you were meant to build. So yeah, the last two years ever since I really started meditating and started reconnecting with my heart-brain, I have learned to live more, the life I really, really wanted to live. And in order to do that, you have to act boldly. When you have that vision, when you have a dream, you really need to act. You have 24 hours to make that first move. Otherwise, it could dissolve and it goes away, the inspiration goes away. People wait for clarity, but clarity comes in engagement, so when you have that gift of vision or a gift of a dream, that’s a gift, and we need to act boldly immediately and make that first move. That’s what it means.
Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us on The Revue. And where can they find you on social media or if they want to get in contact with you to get some more information?
CP: Oh, they can visit—for Skinworx it’s www.myskinworx.com. For my personal brand, it’s www.cheryl-pierce.com.
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